02/27/2026
On this day, 27 February 1973, armed Native American activists occupied Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in protest against tribal corruption and the continuing failure of the US government to fulfil treaties they signed with Indigenous peoples.
Around 200 Oglala Lakota people, alongside activists in the American Indian Movement (AIM) took over the site of the 1890 massacre of Native Americans by US troops.
National guard troops, FBI agents and federal marshals swarmed the area, shooting at occupiers with machine guns and tracer fire. Len Foster, a Diné (Navajo) man who took part in the occupation, recounted to Alysa Landry of Indian Country Today taking part in 11 firefights with federal officers: “Each one was very intense, very life-threatening… It was an intense, very serious engagement.”
Despite suffering casualties, some fatal, the occupiers held out for 71 days until eventually surrendering. Though not successful in achieving its stated goals, the occupation galvanised huge support for AIM, famously including Marlon Brando’s boycott of that year’s Oscars, instead sending Sacheen Littlefeather, an Apache actor in his place to collect his best actor award; she delivered a speech about Wounded Knee to reporters backstage after she was threatened with arrest for speaking on the podium.
For Len Foster, “In a way, it was a very beautiful experience… Wounded Knee opened a lot of hearts and minds to what oppression we were suffering. We were downtrodden, oppressed, made to feel ashamed. We were told to cut our long hair, not to participate in ceremonies, to become Christian and burn our medicine bundles. All the decisions we made at Wounded Knee affect our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.”
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